Earlier this year Audaxes have been failures - from the heroic (bonk/total
despair at 170km) to the laughable (DNS - alarm clock). Hence it was with
some trepidation that Naath and I set out on this one on Saturday. We'd
come up 35-odd miles to Reading the night before, failed to completely
stuff ourselves with pasta (a mistake), and trundled up to the start.
Not many entries - 14 or so with about the same for the 200km, and half of
each field DNS thanks to the weather (I saw Dave Larrington of this parish
down for the 200 as a non-starter - hope it wasn't anything more serious).
Hence we were riding alone for almost the entire ride. Intermittently wet
on the outward leg with one of those annoying headwinds - very stiff in
the last five miles or so - which disappears as soon as you turn around. I
started to feel the bonk at about 12 miles - inexplicably, since I'd
hogged a big bowl of porridge and a banana that morning - but this time I
did the sensible thing; stopped and devoured a whole packet of fig
newtons, and soon felt much better.
The return leg was quite dry, but just outside Pangbourne we discovered
the chainring bolts on the stoker's sync chainring were loosening. To be
precise, we discovered this when the sync chain fell off because only one
of the chainring bolts was left. Fortunately we could coast down to the
town where there's a bike shop, but a) must remember to do them up tighter
than tight b) must remember to add cable ties to my spares kit - they
could easily have held it on for the rest of the ride.
Even with this little drama we made it back with about 40 minutes to
spare, but this was at the BP 12.5 km/h minimum. Then on the way home it
rained explosively, but such is life. Nice ride; shame about the weather.
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> flcl?
Today is First Sunday, Presuary - a weekend.